Greyhounds
Have you seen those women?
The confident ones?
The ones who boldly stride.
Like greyhounds they race past my garden.
As I
Barefoot
Heavy breasted
Kneel for the pulling of weeds.
I searched for my lover, wandering through many hearts and deserts
I, the lover, my heart is a lover, my soul, I miss it
I couldn’t find her, the angel, my beloved
I sought my beloved, soaring to the heavens
I searched for Shirin and Layli, the princess, my soul’s beloved
My heart searching, eagerly seeking, yearning for the tale
I was stricken like separation, O beautiful parrot
I became enchanted, a lover, longing, I miss it
That ghazal, the parrot’s melody, took my soul to the sky
A pure heart, I became a lover, my heart longs, I miss it
—
Tursunov Abdulla Bakhrom o’g’li was born on September 18,2005, in the Nurobod district of the Samarkand region. He is currently first course in the Karshi university of history faculty.
a Gothic French princess on a hill overlooking the Sunset Strip a white stone beauty with a casual toss of gray head of slate roofing earthquake proof, turreted the castle still stands almost a hundred years of tread and wear parties, scandals, affairs of musicians and actors of writers making history.
They came under cover of darkness entered silently through the garage, no need for anyone to spot them no bright-lit lobby their shame, their value in the critical eyes of a culture where privacy not guaranteed but at the castle they could mourn, drink, create inspired and protected by the knowing kindly staff.
A glamorous shabby-chic version of the Loire Valley’s Chateau d’Amboise opened as apartments on the teeter edge of the stock market crash cheap rooms with cachet.
The movie studios funded Chateau suites for cheats to preserve their stars’ gleam the new owner made it safe for Hollywood royalty the hunchback manager the in-house phone operator the Garage Boys valets and maids always silent on the misfits, iconoclasts, outcasts, deviants, gays after the drunken fights trashed rooms, broken hearts the news had no clue.
The New York writers came uncomfortable in LA at home in the Chateau Hollywood-on-the-Hudson and they wrote scripts Rebel without a Cause, Sunset Boulevard, Music Man, Ben-Hur articles by Dominick Dunne on the infamous O.J. trial and so much more.
Run by eccentrics for eccentrics the castle fell to careless hands holding companies, banks threatened foreclosure the downslide of the aging belle at the seedy top of the hill shag rugs patched with tape peeling paint in shreds, must furnishings broken fixtures shabby-genteel, a place outside of time.
The new owner updated an elegant conversion with old-world charm a historic cultural monument where hijinks could continue: Jim Morrison fell off the roof a lyricist shot himself John Belushi overdosed the hideout hit the papers the Chateau an open secret of legendary, fashionable funk.
A new era, a new owner New York nightclub magnate full restoration upgrade to a chic upscale loftiness a buzzy bar scene, swanky showbiz party exclusives splashy bashes for the stars their premieres and awards.
So now the old girl looks down a long nose from her perch on the hill over the new Hollywood still classic, still historic with a modern LA brand.
The Chelsea (1884-present)
“You’ve got a great future behind you.” —old billboard in Times Square
New York’s most illustrious third-rate hotel the place Leonard Cohen made love to an unforgiving Janis Joplin and Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can’t Go Home Again and Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur Miller the play on his iconic ex-wife Bob Dylan the lyrics for Blonde on Blonde and Dylan Thomas drank until he died young.
The largest, longest lasting creative community in the world designed as a haven for artists in the old theater district a cooperative building twelve stories of red brick in Queen Anne Revival style with wrought iron balconies a homey atmosphere in-room fireplaces a rooftop terrace a basement kitchen with dumbwaiters private dining rooms and a public café.
Attracting a cross-section of all social classes the rent affordable the rooms soundproofed for musicians and writers north-facing windows in studios for painters short-term or long-term a friendly residence an experiment in living in harmony with others.
By 1905 the co-op failing financially forcing subdivision from 125 rooms to 300 smaller spaces then bankruptcy after the Depression and Hungarian émigrés purchased and protected the hotel and the artists for 75 more years.
The theater district gone meant a downhill slide a rundown neighborhood seedy offices, tawdry bars and gradual hotel decay clanging heating pipes shabby rooms, dirty rugs with further subdivisions to 400 dingy rooms still popular, still housing knowns and unknowns long-distance truckers pensioners, burlesque dancers novelists, crackpots, drunks.
A miniature Ellis Island of the odd and avant-garde through the ’40s and ’50s the bohemians, the beatniks Kerouac and Ginsberg and the drug-fueled ’60s Christo and Warhol Pop artists, rock bands Jefferson Airplane, Janis slugging Southern Comfort Alice Cooper with a python wrapped around his neck.
Marijuana smoke wafting tattered halls, tattered tenants paying overdue rent in art displayed on lobby walls and hiding from hustlers pushers, hookers, pimps holdups, gunfire, junkies room fires, overdoses, leaps from the roof or out windows.
A city no longer doable for artists, the young or old the hotel sold, closed down the power of the creative community forgotten as history made way for the fortunate few rooftop gardens torn up the wall art torn down rooms gutted and enlarged into 155 elite suites a lobby full of new art a lobby bar full of chic.
In the city of ashes the city of gold, the Chelsea on the Register of Historic Places the icon casts a glitter sheen for influencer appeal.
Key West
The southernmost isle once called Cayo Hueso the island of bones— bones from a battle or Indian burial ground so there was always this legacy of lawlessness: pirates, wreckers, smugglers drugs, drinking, wilderness only reachable by boat the glistening white sand water jade green and aqua where ocean and Gulf met.
Pirates hunted for booty until the Navy arrived built a base, a busy port for Greek sponge divers for Cuban cigar makers treasure hunters seeking shipwrecks and sunken gold then the hotels and shops cottage homes and bars the Conch Republic born of Caribbean and Cuban influx and escapees from elsewhere creating a rough culture.
Henry Flagler linked the chain Palm Beach to the Keys the East Coast Railway and a hotel for visitors escaping winter storms Prohibition’s restrictions to where liquor flowed the Conchs smuggling in fat boatloads of booze after a deadly hurricane blew down the railroad the Overseas Highway the route to Key West the tropical oasis otherworldly, exotic a seaside sanctuary where art could flourish.
Hemingway in residence fishing, drinking, writing his most significant works he nicknamed his island the St. Tropez of the poor and Tennessee Williams bought a bungalow refuge brought gay friends to stay in the laissez faire outpost of the next literary star Thomas McGuane filming his rock ‘n’ roll novel Ninety-Two in the Shade his pal Jimmy Buffett on the soundtrack with no real music scene in the eclectic bars where everyone gathered, all types: politicians and criminals hippies and rednecks artists and bums and he sang for free drinks began to write story-songs on the laidback island life.
When “Margaritaville” hit the charts and the tourists flocked to the happy hours cheeseburgers in paradise cruise ships, mad crowds crime, trash and trinkets new rents and home prices nobody could afford so the writers left the millionaires, developers vacationers and wannabes an alcohol-fueled theme park the old island of bones the legacy of pirates seeking others’ treasure blind to it themselves.
Provincetown
A finger of land at the very tip a sandbar to mainland Mass a salty spit of gray isolation after the Mayflower anchored the women washed, their men stole Indian corn, skirmished before moving on to Plymouth and Portuguese whalers arrived harpooning thick pods to sell whale oil, bones, baleen, the cod catch plush so they sent for family the railroad down from Boston and the Cape Cod School of Art in the diverse community of immigrants, artists, outsiders.
Ensconced in a lunar dunescape in the old Life-Saving Station young Eugene O’Neill penned 19 short plays, 7 long, his first performed in a decrepit fish shed Bound East for Cardiff giving birth to modern American drama Anna Christie about the fishermen on the island: a grand place to be alone and undisturbed.
John Dos Passos down the street on Commercial faced the harbor and Norman Mailer’s house where he wrote the majority of his books in summers and spent his final years in: the freest town in America that was naturally spooky off-season a place for murderers and suicides with cold sea air with a bottomless chill.
Painters came for the crystal purity of the aquatic light, translucent fleets of squid, flocks of white gulls drafting faded scallop boats squawking terns chasing scarlet crabs red-faced men on creaky piers inhaling deep the briny scent the slap of foamy waves against the rocky shore.
Mary Oliver wrote for decades lush poems on the beauty of the island she called home the skittish skunk, rusty fox glistening sand and scrubby pines the endless surf, the unending call of the foghorn’s haunting note winters windswept and desolate and summer’s blast of blues sunset orange on the salt flats soft music in the misty dawn of inspiration and retreat.
